


Asunder

by Charis



Category: The Musketeers (2014)
Genre: Angst, Canon Compliant, Everything Hurts, First Anniversary, Gen, Morally Ambiguous Character, Nostalgia, Pre-Canon, Tumblr Prompt, Worst Anniversary Ever
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-06
Updated: 2016-09-06
Packaged: 2018-08-12 10:39:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 607
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7931482
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Charis/pseuds/Charis
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>A man, a bedroom, the glow of candles, but nothing is the same.</i>
</p>
<p>This is not the anniversary she had expected.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Asunder

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Zedrobber](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Zedrobber/gifts).



> Another one for Zed, who made the mistake of sending me _congrats_ from the same prompt meme, for the first anniversary. "Because I hate you  <3" indeed -- you brought this one on yourself!

_What therefore God hath joined together let not man put asunder. (Matthew, XIX. 6.)_

A man, a bedroom, the glow of candles: it is all as it had been a year ago. (A man, a bedroom, the glow of candles, but nothing is the same.)

It seems impossible, standing here with her trembling hands hidden in her skirts, that the girl in her memories is not someone else altogether. She had been wary, then, but no more than she had been for most of her life, and if anything less so, looking at the prey she’d entrapped and feeling a warm curl of satisfaction in her belly. A year ago she’d had a new ring on her finger and a new life to claim, with safety and security and a man all too clearly besotted, who looked at her as if she was his entire world.

A year ago, she’d had hope – hope of escaping the streets that had been her only home, hope of escaping the life a woman alone – a girl, really, she’d been little more than a girl,  or a wary creature wearing a girl’s skin – was all but condemned to, hope of being more than she’d been born to, more than her birth condemned her to. (She had not yet dared be so foolish as to hope for more than an escape. Back then she had let him into her body, but she had not yet been fool enough to open her heart.)

A year ago, she could not have imagined what today might bring. A month ago, she had dreamed – foolish, girlish dreams, when she should have known better – of something like this, of something not in the least alike, of a husband who loved her and a place that was becoming home and of words she’d never understood finally beginning to make sense. A month ago, she had dared to dream, dared to hope, dared to think _what if_ , lost in the way his eyes crinkled when he smiled and the sigh of her name against her skin. Sunlight and sweetness had worn her down, made her weak, made her wonder.

A month gone and she comes to this day and the edges have returned, and the dream is a flower plucked and wilted, blood dripping from her fingertips, shrill accusations and eyes that refuse to meet her own and the bitter taste of bile and her own heart. She had survived, and it had cost her everything she had dreamed she might be, but she does not regret it. The girl those dreams had belonged to would not have had the strength for everything she must do just to endure.

The knife beneath her skirts is a cold, hard line, a reassuring weight against her thigh.

She is what the world has made her; she had been a fool to dare believe it could be otherwise. And he had only proven himself no different from the men of the world she’d known – and how could he not, when that golden idyll had been a short-lived reprieve and this is the only world that is?

A man, a bedroom, the glow of candles: it is fitting that she should be here, like this, today of all days.

“Milady?”

She turns away from the window, and the smile on her face is as false as the name she wears (as much and more, when the name is what she must be). “It’s nothing,” she says, as she had then, in that other life, words that are no less true now than they had been before, and lets him lead her to bed.


End file.
